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Age and asbestos exposure. . . and other stories

Asbestos

Levels of occupational and environmental airborne asbestos are now so low that it’s not possible to make reliable estimates of long term exposure by air sampling. Instead, a multicentre study from the UK used lung tissue taken from people being treated for lung cancer and pneumothorax to examine lung burdens of asbestos at different ages (Int J Epidemiol doi:10.1093/ije/dyx276). It found a striking reduction in those born after 1960. The investigators calculate that the lifetime mesothelioma risk among people born since then will be around one in 10 000. This is a thousand times lower than …